Of Good Report

When my wife and I emigrated from South Africa to New Zealand in 2003, we had meager financial resources. We prayed to see that God was the true, unlimited source of our supply.

Last year, our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren were spending a holiday weekend with my wife and me. After enjoying some time outdoors, my daughter and I had just started up the exterior stairs when we heard disturbingly loud cracking sounds.

It was the morning after Christmas, Boxing Day. I had studied the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, which was on the subject of “God.

As a fairly new member of a Christian Science branch church years ago, I was happy to be elected to serve on its Board of Trustees—my first opportunity to fill a church board position. What I didn’t know was that the membership was bitterly divided over whether to keep or sell the church edifice, and that board work would be contentious and stressful.

Some years ago I came to understand, in a tangible way, the meaning of this quote from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” ( p. 494 ).

Breaking up with someone who has been important to you can bring a sense of loss, grief, hurt, and sometimes anger. But these feelings are not inevitable.

American humorist Garrison Keillor quipped, “Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car. ”  True, yet attending church is so much more than being a “pew potato” instead of a “couch potato.

I grew up in the Deep South of the United States, during a time when segregation made it nearly impossible to know anyone outside of their own race. I was also aware of the prevailing belief that not everyone was loved by God.

In 1995, my husband and I went on holiday to England with our two small daughters. On our last day there, my handbag went missing from the restaurant where we were having lunch.

“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God” ( Psalms 20:7 ). I love this passage from the Bible.